In recent years, economic and social historians have made increasing use of anthropometric records (principally, records of human height and weight) to investigate changes in human health and well-being. This paper summarises some of the main findings of this research and demonstrates the remarkable increases in human height which have occurred during the course of the present century. The paper also examines the relationship between changes in average height and changes in life expectancy. Although most of the evidence assembled by anthropometric historians has been derived from records relating to schoolchildren and young adults, their work has profound implications for the study of health in old age. The concluding section examines the relevance of this work to current debates on the decline of mortality, the ‘compression of morbidity’ and the future of social policy.

Current concepts of dementia often act to exclude the internal world of the dementia sufferer from consideration as a valid object of study. This paper presents a three stage model of the subjective world of dementia sufferers, drawing on ideas from both clinical and social psychology. The first stage involves the feelings engendered by the process of dementia and includes at least four discrete states: anxiety; depression; grief; and despair/terror. The second stage of the model concerns the behaviour provoked in response to the process of decline. Finally, we consider the social nature of emotional behaviour, with emotional actions falling along a continuum. The ability of an individual with dementia to engage in emotional behaviour depends upon the extent of their cognitive impairment and the social context in which they are located. This model has implications for the delivery of services, including psychotherapy, to people with dementia.

This article addresses the issue of the loss of identity a woman experiences when she becomes a widow. Based on an analysis of published autobiographical accounts of widowhood, it looks at how women express their experience of losing their husbands. It explicates a process of ‘identity foreclosure’ which strips a woman of her identity at every level, and the process by which the authors of these accounts have built new identities. Extensive quoting from the published accounts reveals the richness of these data and provides a feeling for the emotional impact of widowhood that women experience.

This paper critically assesses an increasing use of mask motifs to examine questions of identity in later life. Two approaches are subjected to detailed analysis, both of which propose distinctive answers to the challenge to identity management emerging from high or post modernity. First, consideration is given to a postmodern ‘mask of ageing’ (Featherstone and Hepworth 1989), key elements of which include consumer culture and the ageing body. Secondly, psychodynamic conceptions of masquerade and the use of personae are examined, whereby discussion centres on expanded personal potential in the second half of life and protection against a hostile social environment. A developmental model of social masking is proposed. Whilst there are superficial similarities in the use of masking, these traditions are shown to have radically different ideas concerning the core contradictions of an ageing identity. Implications for identity management and the status of body, midlifestyle and authenticity in later life, plus the need for subtlety in research methodology, are drawn out.

Taking a life-cycle approach to marital power relations, the paper compares the attitudes of married men close to retirement with those who are retired. An integrative model based on Resource Theory was designed to analyse the effect of several variables on the husband's perceptions of power relations: perceived resources, attitudes toward gender roles, emotional commitment to his wife and anticipated dependence on her. The model was tested on a sample of 348 Israeli men – 137 pre-retired and 211 retirees. Contrary to expectations of a decline in the retired husband's perceived power, no differences were found between the two groups except for a reported increase in social power among the older group. Major differences were found, however, regarding the overall impact of variables: perceived economic resources had the strongest explanatory power for pre-retired respondents, whereas it was psycho-social factors (anticipated dependence on the wife for satisfaction of emotional needs, psychological resources, and emotional commitment to the wife) that best explained variance among retirees. The increased dependence of retired husbands on their wives' expressive resources seems to contradict their reports of greater social power, suggesting that their perceptions of marital power relations may be coloured by feelings of status anxiety.

The purpose of this review is to identify and explore the emerging attention being paid to the individual in dementia research. Following a brief introduction, the review will examine literature which recognises three aspects of the person with dementia: the individual's sense of self; the person's rights; and the value to be gained from a concern with the perspectives of people with dementia. To date the medical model has dominated dementia research. This model tends to reduce the person with dementia to his/her neurobiology or neuropsychology (Cotrell and Schulz 1993). The experience and manifestation of dementia has been attributed solely to the disease process, with a consequent neglect of the psychosocial context surrounding the individual (Lyman 1989). Research on the psychosocial aspects of dementia has concentrated on family carers. Keady (1996) provides a useful categorisation of this research into the following topics: gender and coping style; marital relationships and the impact of dementia; access to information and services; participation in and effectiveness of support groups; adjustment and circumstances surrounding admission into care; and perception of own health needs. No literature focuses on people with dementia.